Review of 'The Quotable Atheist' by Jack Huberman

In his new book, The Quotable Atheist, author Jack Huberman has collected powerful quotations against organized religion and belief in God from figures such as Richard Dawkins, Phyllis Diller, Frederick Douglass, Michael Moore, Katha Pollitt, and yes, Jerry Falwell.



Reposted from:
http://www.alternet.org/story/47765/
reposted from: http://richarddawkins.net/article,640,n,n
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The following is an excerpt from Jack Huberman's new book, The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound (Nation Books, 2007).

The world (not just America) is deeply divided.The main fault line is where the tectonic plates of religion and of reason/secularism/ modernity/science/Enlightenment meet and grind against each other,making an absolutely unbearable noise. It's sort of like ... forget it, I can't describe it.

My aim in compiling The Quotable Atheist was to heal our broken planet, essentially by eliminating the religious part. Not with nuclear weapons or lesser acts of mass murder, no -- that's the religious style, nowadays, in certain quarters -- but through argument, persuasion, and most of all (since I know perfectly well that argument is utterly useless against dumb, blind faith, and just wanted to pay it lip service), the steady application of powerfully abrasive ridicule which will slowly but surely erode away the offending continent. I'm serious. Do I really believe this book will convert believers and turn them from the path of self-righteousness to the path of righteousness? Yes. A few. Three, I estimate. Two for sure. But the point is this:

For years, millions of fine, upstanding American atheists and agnostics have watched and stewed as the religious right expanded its influence throughout public life, and as America closed its mind and opened its heart to angels, aliens, ghosts, psychics, Jesus, astrology, Kabbalah, Genesis, Revelation. ... As Sam Harris wrote in The End of Faith, "Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world."

Meanwhile, religion continues to be granted far too much respect and too little critical examination in our culture and mainstream media.We need to change the cultural climate so as to make supernatural, occult, and faith-based claptrap feel unwelcome and to make adults ashamed of the blithe surrender of their otherwise sound minds to idiocy.We need climate change. Bullshit levels are rising globally, threatening to submerge intellectually low-lying areas. Much of the United States is already inundated.Temperatures are rising; IQs are dropping. Four of the five stupidest years on record have occurred since 2000.

I would of course have preferred a declaration by the president of the United States -- purportedly God's messenger on earth -- stating that neither God nor WMDs ever existed and that most religious beliefs are untrue and harmful, and urging citizens to bring their minds back up at least to an eighteenth-century stage of development. (I have proposed this plan in a letter to George W. Bush, but haven't heard back yet. They must be hashing out the details.) Failing that, it is up to atheist/secularist groups and individuals to do what we can to stop global worming (people groveling like worms before nonexistent deities). That's where this book comes in.

As a number of these collected quotes say (far more wittily): Religion in general is based on falsehoods -- comforting beliefs in a heavenly parent or big brother; hopes of surviving death -- and on utility or expedience: socially cohesive tribal myths; politically useful codes of law and behavior; divine ordination of rulers (including certain presidents); attempts to explain, influence, or placate nature and the elements; the wish to raise ourselves above (i.e., deny our place among) the animals. Religion may help people feel their lives have a loftier purpose than the mere satisfaction of material wants and sensual desires, but it does it with smoke and mirrors, at the cost of our respect for truth and of our integrity and dignity.

The following quotes are selected from The Quotable Atheist.

Richard Dawkins: Kenyan-born British zoologist and evolutionary theorist.

"Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? ... The afterlifeobsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile. ...Yet ... it is very very cheap. ...To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used." - 2001

"[A letter to a U.K. newspaper] says 'science provides an explanation of the mechanism of the [December 2004 Asian] tsunami but it cannot say why this occurred any more than religion can.' There, in one sentence, we have the religious mind displayed before us in all its absurdity. In what sense of the word 'why', does plate tectonics not provide the answer? Not only does science know why the tsunami happened, it can give precious hours of warning. If a small fraction of the tax breaks handed out to churches, mosques and synagogues had been diverted into an early warning system, tens of thousands of people, now dead, would have been moved to safety. Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering."

Phyllis Diller: (1917– ), American comedian.

"Religion is such a medieval idea. Don't get me started. ... Aahh, it's all about money..."

Phil Donahue: (1935-) American talk-show host.

From Donahue's 1985 book The Human Animal:

"Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert. Except for the garments, their deep religious trances might just as well be happening at a revival meeting or in the congregation of a fundamentalist TV preacher. ... As we move further from the life of ignorance and superstition in which religion has its roots, we seem to need it more and more. ... Why has religion become a force just when we'd have thought it would be losing ground to secularism?"

Frederick Douglass: (1818-1895), African-American abolitionist leader.

"I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."

"The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. ... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!"

"We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand."

Jerry Falwell: (1933- ), American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and leading excrescence.

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions."

Thomas Jefferson: (1743-1826), third U.S. president.

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies."

"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ... perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind ... a mere contrivance [for the clergy] to filch wealth and power to themselves."

"In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty, he is always in allegiance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own. ... History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. ... Political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves [of public ignorance] for their own purpose."

Michael Moore: (1954- ), American documentary filmmaker and author.

"There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them."

Katha Pollitt: (1949- ), American poet and columnist for The Nation.

"For me, religion is serious business -- a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny and humble pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom."

What is junk DNA, and what is it worth?

by A. Khajavinia

Wojciech Makalowski, a Pennsylvania State University biology professor and researcher in computational evolutionary genomics, answers this query.

Our genetic blueprint consists of 3.42 billion nucleotides packaged in 23 pairs of linear chromosomes. Most mammalian genomes are of comparable size—the mouse script is 3.45 billion nucleotides, the rat's is 2.90 billion, the cow's is 3.65 billion—and code for a similar number of genes: about 35,000. Of course, extremes exist: the bent-winged bat (Miniopterus schreibersi) has a relatively small 1.69-billion-nucleotide genome; the red viscacha rat (Tympanoctomys barrerae) has a genome that is 8.21 billion nucleotides long. Among vertebrates, the highest variability in genome size exists in fish: the green puffer fish (Chelonodon fluviatilis) genome contains only 0.34 billion nucleotides, while the marbled lungfish (Protopterus aethiopicus) genome is gigantic, with almost 130 billion. Interestingly, all animals have a large excess of DNA that does not code for the proteins used to build bodies and catalyze chemical reactions within cells. In humans, for example, only about 2 percent of DNA actually codes for proteins.

For decades, scientists were puzzled by this phenomenon. With no obvious function, the noncoding portion of a genome was declared useless or sometimes called "selfish DNA," existing only for itself without contributing to an organism's fitness. In 1972 the late geneticist Susumu Ohno coined the term "junk DNA" to describe all noncoding sections of a genome, most of which consist of repeated segments scattered randomly throughout the genome.

Typically these sections of junk DNA come about through transposition, or movement of sections of DNA to different positions in the genome. As a result, most of these regions contain multiple copies of transposons, which are sequences that literally copy or cut themselves out of one part of the genome and reinsert themselves somewhere else.

Elements that use copying mechanisms to move around the genome increase the amount of genetic material. In the case of "cut and paste" elements, the process is slower and more complicated, and involves DNA repair machinery. Nevertheless, if transposon activity happens in cells that give rise to either eggs or sperm, these genes have a good chance of integrating into a population and increasing the size of the host genome.

Although very catchy, the term "junk DNA" repelled mainstream researchers from studying noncoding genetic material for many years. After all, who would like to dig through genomic garbage? Thankfully, though, there are some clochards who, at the risk of being ridiculed, explore unpopular territories. And it is because of them that in the early 1990s, the view of junk DNA, especially repetitive elements, began to change. In fact, more and more biologists now regard repetitive elements as genomic treasures. It appears that these transposable elements are not useless DNA. Instead, they interact with the surrounding genomic environment and increase the ability of the organism to evolve by serving as hot spots for genetic recombination and by providing new and important signals for regulating gene expression.

Genomes are dynamic entities: new functional elements appear and old ones become extinct. And so, junk DNA can evolve into functional DNA. The late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould and paleontologist Elisabeth Vrba, now at Yale University, employed the term "exaptation" to explain how different genomic entities may take on new roles regardless of their original function—even if they originally served no purpose at all. With the wealth of genomic sequence information at our disposal, we are slowly uncovering the importance of non-protein-coding DNA.

In fact, new genomic elements are being discovered even in the human genome, five years after the deciphering of the full sequence. Last summer developmental biologist Gill Bejerano, then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and now a professor at Stanford University, and his colleagues discovered that during vertebrate evolution, a novel retroposon—a DNA fragment, reverse-transcribed from RNA, that can insert itself anywhere in the genome—was exapted as an enhancer, a signal that increases a gene's transcription. On the other hand, anonymous sequences that are nonfunctional in one species may, in another organism, become an exon—a section of DNA that is eventually transcribed to messenger RNA. Izabela Makalowska of Pennsylvania State University recently showed that this mechanism quite often leads to another interesting feature in the vertebrate genomes, namely overlapping genes—that is, genes that share some of their nucleotides.

These and countless other examples demonstrate that repetitive elements are hardly "junk" but rather are important, integral components of eukaryotic genomes. Risking the personification of biological processes, we can say that evolution is too wise to waste this valuable information.

reposted from: SciAm
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UK bird flu outbreak - who dunnit?

Exclusive

• 18:00 12 February 2007
• NewScientist.com news service
• Debora MacKenzie

On 3 February 2007, confirmation came that the deadly strain of H5N1 had made it to Europe’s biggest poultry plant, the Bernard Matthews turkey farm in Suffolk, eastern England (see H5N1 bird flu outbreak confirmed on English farm). It was the second confirmed case of this strain of the virus in a European Union state in 2007, following an outbreak in Hungary.

The H5N1 virus is known to have infected 270 people and killed more than 160 worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia, and over 200 million birds have died from it or been killed to prevent its spread. (Find out more in our Bird Flu special report.)

The H5N1 bird flu was found in a turkey production plant with active biosecurity measures – how did it get in and where did it come from? New Scientist investigates (see graphic, right).

Suspect: East Asia

Evidence: The highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu that has killed 166 people so far first evolved in poultry in southern China, and it has spread with poultry across the region. It has become widespread in poultry and has caused the most cases so far in people – Indonesia is now hardest hit.

Verdict: Extremely unlikely to have spread directly from here to the UK. The H5N1 circulating in Europe is descended from a strain first isolated in wild birds at Qinghai Lake in central China in 2005. This is genetically distinct from the H5N1 circulating in poultry in the Far East.

Suspect: Siberia

Evidence: Dabbling ducks can carry H5N1 and stay healthy. Many dabbling ducks now wintering in Europe spent the summer nesting in Siberia. Nesting grounds are where birds contract bird flu most often. 20 kilometres from Holton is a nature reserve where wigeons – gregarious dabbling ducks that summer across Siberia – are wintering. Those ducks could well have nested alongside birds now wintering in Hungary. They all could have carried the same virus from Siberia to both England and Hungary, where it circulated at a low level among other birds. Then some local poultry farm just got unlucky.

Further evidence: Recent H5N1 outbreaks in poultry in Krasnodar on the Russian Black Sea coast, and in eastern Turkey (major destinations for the same ducks) plus suspected human cases in nearby Azerbaijan.

Verdict: Likely. How did H5N1 get from wild birds into “closed” turkey barns? A worker could merely have stepped in duck faeces then walked into a barn, say scientists. Turkeys are incredibly sensitive to H5N1.

Suspect: Hungary

Evidence: Hungary had an H5N1 outbreak in geese in Csongrad on 19 January, and the virus is described as genetically very similar. The British outbreak started on 27 January 2007.

Verdict: Just because one happened after the other, it doesn’t mean the first one caused it. Bernard Matthews, the company that owns the British turkey farm, owns a turkey processing plant at Sarvar, Hungary, which sends 38 tonnes of “partly processed” turkey to the British plant weekly. But Sarvar is 260 kilometres from Csongrad making direct spread unlikely. Some Sarvar turkeys were slaughtered at a plant also handling Csongrad birds, so carcasses might have been some cross-contaminated. A smear of turkey on a worker’s shoe could have got it from processing plant to turkey barn.

Suspect: Scotland

Evidence: Britain’s only previous case of H5N1 was a dead whooper swan in a harbour in Cellardyke, Scotland, in March 2006. Could the virus have persisted in British birds? No other birds with H5N1 have been found in Britain, and officials have suggested that the swan was infected in Germany, and died while migrating over Scotland. But questions surround Britain’s wild bird surveillance. Scientists in Sweden find influenza viruses of all types, on average, in 14% of dabblers tested, with higher levels in autumn after nesting season. But last autumn the British testing programme found influenza in a tiny 0.8% of thousands of dabblers tested. This suggests the methodology is missing infected birds, and potentially H5N1. On the other hand, H5N1 is clearly rare; the best way to detect it might be to leave “sentinel” turkeys outdoors.

Verdict: Likely. The same wild British ducks that infected the Scottish swan may have infected the Bernard Matthews turkeys. A worker could merely have stepped in duck faeces then walked into a barn, say scientists.

reposted from: NewScientist
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ESP laboratory closes its doors

The lab's research drew ridicule from the scientific community

A US laboratory set up to study ESP and telekinesis is to close at the end of the month, ending a strained 30-year relationship with the scientific world.

Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab (PEAR) was set up in 1979 to examine human consciousness and its affects on computers and machines.

Founder Robert Jahn, 76, said the lab, with its ageing equipment and dwindling finances, has done what it needed to.

Many scientists have been dismissive of the Princeton University-based unit.

A typical PEAR experiment had a person sitting in front of an electric box which flashed numbers just above or below 100.

The participant would be told to "think high" or "think low" as they watched the display.

Researchers concluded that people could alter the results in such machines about two or three times out of 10,000.

PEAR says such effects could be "functionally devastating" for people working in aircraft cockpits, surgical facilities and even ICBM missile silos.

'Embarrassment to science'

"Venues that appear to be particularly conducive to such field anomalies include small intimate groups, group rituals, sacred sites, musical and theatrical performances, and other charismatic events," it adds.

Mr Jahn, former dean of Princeton's engineering school and an emeritus professor, told the New York Times: "For 28 year, we've done what we wanted to do, and there's no reason to stay and generate more of the same data.

"If people don't believe us after all the results we've produced, then they never will."

Funded by private donations rather than grants obtained via peer-reviewed research, the lab had an awkward relationship with the scientific community.

"It's been an embarrassment to science, and I think an embarrassment for Princeton," Robert Park, a University of Maryland physicist, told the NYT.

"Science has a substantial amount of credibility, but this is the kind of thing that squanders it."

A statement on the PEAR website said the lab was to transfer to a nearby non-profit group, the International Consciousness Research Laboratories.

reposted from: BBC
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MySpace Launches Pilot to Filter Videos

By ANICK JESDANUN
AP Internet Writer Feb 12, 11:19 AM EST
NEW YORK (AP) -- The popular online hangout MySpace said Monday it will experiment with a video-filtering system designed to block clips containing copyright materials.

MySpace is licensing technology from Audible Magic Corp., which late last year obtained rights to a system for scanning video clips and looking for signature vectors - such as a unique digital fingerprint - to compare with vectors stored in a database. Video can be blocked from appearing on MySpace when there is a match.

The video system supplements audio filtering MySpace already has in place to block unauthorized music uploads.

In the video-filtering pilot, MySpace said it would block unauthorized music videos and other clips containing Universal Music Group's music, while still allowing the Vivendi SA unit and its artists to circulate promotional audio and video they authorize. MySpace, a unit of News Corp., said the tools would be available for free to other content owners as well.

"MySpace is dedicated to ensuring that content owners, whether large or small, can both promote and protect their content in our community," Chris DeWolfe, MySpace's co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement. "For MySpace, video filtering is about protecting artists and the work they create."

The ability to post video on the site is among the features MySpace offers to encourage visitors to expand their circle of friends and share hobbies and other interests.

MySpace and other video-sharing sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube long have had policies to remove copyright materials, but generally do so only after receiving a complaint from the copyright holder. Users can easily repost the same clip to the sites under a different, free account. If Audible Magic's technology works as promised, MySpace would be able to block any such attempts to repost material already identified as unauthorized.

MySpace officials say the latest offering was unrelated to Universal Music's federal lawsuit in November, accusing MySpace of illegally encouraging its users to share music and music videos on the site without permission. That lawsuit remains pending and seeks unspecified damages, including up to $150,000 for each unauthorized music video or song posted on the site.

On the Net:

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com

Audible Magic Corp.: http://www.audiblemagic.com

reposted from: Wired
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Video: Octopus Mating a Tangled Affair

February 16, 2007—For a male cyanea octopus, finding a mate is all about showing a little "leg."

From sniffing the water for female pheromones to baring their suckers to scare off potential rivals, the creatures must make good use of their eight appendages for a chance to reproduce.

Watch a tense standoff between two competing males, and see the victor learn the harsh lesson that getting a female's attention isn't the same as keeping it.

RELATED

• Common Octopus: Photos, Facts, More
• Video: Octopus Changes Color, Textures
• Video: Giant Octopus Battles Shark

if (caption) { document.write(caption); } reposted from: National Geographic Digital Media
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AAAS Meeting: Libras, Watch Your Pelvises! Study Links Astrological Signs to Disease, But...

by Kristen Philipkoski, with Randy Dotinga and Scott Carney

Friday, 16 February 2007

Libras, Watch Your Pelvises! Study Links Astrological Signs to Disease, But...
Topic: AAAS Meeting

Attention all Libras: Walk carefully. You seem to have a higher risk of fracturing your pelvis than people born under other astrological signs.

Pisces? Heart failure is more likely to hit you than other people. And stay clear of Virgos when they've got a bun in the oven -- they have a higher risk of vomiting during pregnancy.

All right, calm down. This isn't a real scientific study. Or at least, it isn't a serious one. OK, it is serious, but you're not supposed to think that being a Leo or whatever will actually affect your health.

To show how connections can appear in research when they don't actually exist, researchers in Canada found that people born under each of 12 astrological signs were more likely to develop certain diseases. (This all came from an analysis of hospital records of 10 million Ontario residents.)

I wasn't able to attend the session on this earlier today at the annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science here in San Francisco, but here are some details from a press release:

“Replace astrological signs with another characteristic such as gender or age, and immediately your mind starts to form explanations for the observed associations,” says [a researcher]. “Then we leap to conclusions, constructing reasons for why we saw the results we did. We did this study to prove a larger point – the more we look for patterns, the more likely we are to find them, particularly when we don’t begin with a particular question.”...

What he found was that even though each astrological sign had its own unique disorders, his initial results were not reproduced when they were explicitly tested in a second population.

“Scientists take pains to make sure their clinical studies are conducted accurately,” [he says], “but sometimes erroneous conclusions will be obtained solely due to chance.” Statistical chance means that 5 per cent of the time, scientists will incorrectly conclude that an association exists, when in reality no such association exists in the population that the scientists are studying.

One way to reduce the chances of drawing a wrong conclusion is to try and reproduce unexpected results in further studies.

“There is a danger in basing scientific decisions on the results of one study, particularly if the results were unanticipated or the association was one that we did not initially decide to examine,” says Austin. “But when several studies all arrive at similar conclusions, we reduce the risk of arriving at an incorrect outcome.”

Charting our health [press release]

reposted from: Wired blogs
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New Mars Pictures Show Signs of Watery "Aquifers"

Richard A. Lovett in San Francisco, California
for National Geographic News

February 16, 2007

Stunning color pictures from Mars offer new evidence that plentiful groundwater once percolated through Martian bedrock.

The new images, taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, reveal a terrain of banded rocks similar to that found in the southwestern U.S., said Chris Okubo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

The new pictures show that Martian rocks in this sandy landscape are riddled with small cracks.

These cracks bear telltale signs that fluid—probably water—seeped through them hundreds of millions of years ago.

Prominent riblike structures along the cracks, for instance, suggest that running water dissolved minerals in the Martian soil, forming a kind of cement.

The water also dissolved dark minerals out of the rocks, leaving light-colored "halos" around the cracks.

These findings are exciting, because they suggest that similar water-filled fractures might still exist beneath the Martian surface, scientists said.

"What we see at the surface today are glimpses of what used to be underground," Okubo said.

Okubo presented the new images at a press conference today in San Francisco, California. His team's findings will appear in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.

Search for Life May Shift

Water is a key component of life as we know it, so the new discovery will be useful in helping scientists hone the search for possible life on Mars, researchers at the conference said.

There is already abundant evidence that early Mars was once water rich, said Stephen Clifford, a Mars hydrologist from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.

But the water has since retreated, presumably underground, and appears to have occasionally reached the surface in large floods.

(Read related story: "Mars's Water Could Be Below Surface, Experts Say" [January 25, 2007].)

Now that it is widely agreed that water once flowed along extensive networks of cracks, a new clue falls into place in a lingering mystery.

"One of the problems [was] how, if the water is underground, you get so much of it to the surface at once," Clifford said.

Other Ingredients of Life

Water appears to have been very common at various times on Mars's surface. So in the search for life it's now time to do more than seek out places where the red planet was once wet, said Tori Hoehler, an astrobiologist with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Instead, scientists need to start thinking about other possible requirements for life, such as energy, Hoehler said.

For example, he said, microorganisms might be able to harness chemical energy from Martian rocks, as some earthly bacteria appear to do.

"This is the next thing we should be looking for on Mars," he said.

But expanding the search for life requires studying the geology in more detail, the scientists said.

NASA's Opportunity rover is currently on the rim of Victoria Crater, where scientists have observed outcrops of rock similar to that seen in Okubo's photos. (Related photos: Mars rovers).

"If we can get to [those outcrops]," Hoehler said, "it would be a great to visit them."

But, Okubo added, "right now, they're on the far side of the craters, so it may take a while for Opportunity to get there."

reposted from: NatGeorgraphic

my highlights / emphasis / comments

Stunning new images from a satellite orbiting Mars reveal that water once snuck along fractures in Mars's layered rocks. The fractures are clearly visible in this view of Becquerel Crater, shooting through both the light- and dark-colored layers that make up the canyon's walls. The blue areas are vast sand dunes, not water. Shot by the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the image also reveals light-colored features, which scientists are calling halos, that cut across the dark bands. The researchers say these are areas where water flowing through the fractures has altered the appearance of rock. Image courtesy Science

Mystery of Galaxies Full of Dark Matter Solved

February 16, 2007 Small galaxies' visible gas may have been scoured away by million-degree coronas of nearby big galaxies By JR Minkel

Image: COURTESY OF STELIOS KAZANTZIDIS GONE DARK? Simulations of galaxy formation indicate that the Milky Way and other large galaxies should be surrounded by numerous smaller galaxies [right]. New work hints that these missing galaxies may be full of dark matter and therefore difficult to spot.

reposted from: SciAm
my highlights / emphasis / comments

Researchers may have explained why a few tiny galaxies around the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies are so rich in dark matter, the invisible stuff that makes up most of the matter in the universe. The key seems to be the bigger, brighter galaxies next door. Simulations indicate that million-degree coronas around these larger galaxies could have scoured away much of the visible gas in their young neighbors while leaving the dark material behind.

Researchers believe that all galaxies large and small should have started out the same—as a ball of dark matter with a disk of visible matter in the center. But some small galaxies, called dwarf spheroidals, are relatively dark for their size; a handful contain roughly 100 times more dark matter per star than the Milky Way and are a million times less luminous. They also tend to cluster around bigger galaxies such as our own. The big question is why.

In new simulations of galaxy formation, Lucio Mayer of the University of Zurich and his colleagues find that, 10 billion years ago, the darkest of today's spheroidals (such as Draco, Ursa Minor and Andromeda IX) were forming around big galaxies from the same mix of visible gas and dark matter, much like planets would form around a star. But they happened to get pulled into orbit around the central galaxy earlier than their counterparts. Once there, according to the group's simulations, shocks from the central galaxy's gravity, and pressure from the hot corona around it, combined to knock loose most of the smaller galaxies' shimmering gas. Only a few remaining stars studded each blob of dark matter. Ultraviolet radiation, which permeated the universe at the time, would have heated the spheroidals' visible gas, leaving it weakly attracted to the little galaxies and thus easy to scrape away, the group reports in this week's Nature. The model is the first to explain why the spheroidals would be both dark and found near bigger galaxies, says co-author Stelios Kazantzidis of Stanford University.

The researchers "do a good job of simulating all of the relevant physics and setting the orbits" of the dwarfs, says astrophysicist James Bullock of the University of California, Irvine. "They make the case that the Milky Way has very likely stripped the gas (and the 'life') out of many of the dwarf galaxies we see around us."

Kazantzidis says the result may also explain why bigger galaxies have many fewer dwarfs around them than the reigning model of "cold," or slow-moving, dark matter would suggest. Other spheroidals may have received a larger dose of the same gas-stripping process, leaving them even less visible and waiting to be discovered.

RELATED LINKS: A Universe of Disks The Search for Dark Matter Does Dark Matter Really Exist? Dwarf Galaxies and Starbursts What's the Matter?

"Idea of the Day" a proposal for Dorset Humanists & other humanists to give a non religious "Thought for the Day"

I propose to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of the first humanist "Thought for the Day" on BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

In this two-and-a-half minute slot on 14th August 2002, Humanist Professor Richard Dawkins from Oxford University, argued science gave a better explanation of life than religion.

British Humanist Association advise that The Humanist Society of Scotland (HSS) thinkhumanist.org broadcast their first "Thought for the Day" on 12th February 2007 (Darwin Day) with Prof. AC Grayling whose thought was about tolerance in society. Following the launch week, the HSS will invite humanists from around the world to podcast on the site, so there is always an alternative to the BBC's Thought for the Day for non-religious thinkers.

"Idea of the Day" - Four proposals

On 26th November 2006 an Ipsos MORI poll has shown that 36% of UK people – equivalent to around 17 million adults – are in fact humanists in their basic outlook.

Firstly, I propose that a two-and-a-half minute talk on the Today programme by a humanist be called "Idea of the Day" to distinguish these talks from the religious "Thought for the Day"

Secondly, I propose that for five days commencing 14th August 2007 a member of Dorset Humanist Association give their two-and-a-half minute "Idea of the Day" to be broadcast on dorsethumanists.co.uk

Thirdly, I propose that BBC Radio 4 Today programme introduce a two-and-a-half minute humanist "Idea of the Day" at 8.50am, one hour after the religious "Thought for the Day", commencing 14th August 2007.

Fourthly, I propose to invite the BBC to broadcast my two-and-a-half minute humanist "Idea of the Day" on BBC Radio 4 Today programme at 8.50am on Tuesday 14th August 2007, IF, AND ONLY IF, four other humanists (via Pledgebank.com) are also invited to give their "Idea of the Day" that week.

Radio 4 "Thought for the Day" Policy
Radio 4's policy of not including non-religious contributors has been heavily criticised - leading to more than 100 public figures demanding the "ban" be lifted.

However, Prof Dawkins's broadcast did not replace the regular daily slot but ran an hour afterwards as an unofficial "Thought".

Christine Morgan, who produces the series, said the official "Thought" would remain closed to non-religious voices.

She told the Today programme: "This short strand is unique, offering a faith perspective within a news programme.

"If we include secular voices, we undermine the slot's very distinctiveness."

Humanist Richard Dawkins gave the first "Thought of the Day" on BBC Radio 4 Today programme - 14th August 2002

Humanist Richard Dawkins gave the first "Thought for the Day" on BBC Radio 4 Today programme

Wednesday, 14 August, 2002, 14:27 GMT 15:27 UK

Atheist gives Thought for the Day

Professor Dawkins delivered an unofficial "Thought"

A scientist has become the first atheist to deliver a Thought for the Day on the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme.

In his two-and-a-half minute slot, Professor Richard Dawkins from Oxford University, argued science gave a better explanation of life than religion.

Radio 4's policy of not including non-religious contributors has been heavily criticised - leading to more than 100 public figures demanding the "ban" be lifted.

However, Prof Dawkins's broadcast did not replace the regular daily slot but ran an hour afterwards as an unofficial "Thought".

Humanity can now leave the cry-baby phase and finally come of age - that is a thought for more than one day

Professor Richard Dawkins

Christine Morgan, who produces the series, said the official "Thought" would remain closed to non-religious voices.

She told the Today programme: "This short strand is unique, offering a faith perspective within a news programme.

"If we include secular voices, we undermine the slot's very distinctiveness."

In his talk, Prof Dawkins argued that science had managed to explain many of the mysteries of life and that believing that God could protect us was an "infantile regression".

'End the ban'

He said: "We have been born and we are going to die, but before we die we have time to understand why we were born.

"Humanity can now leave the cry-baby phase and finally come of age - that is a thought for more than one day."

Prof Dawkins was one of 102 people who put their name to the letter to the BBC governors, drawn up by the British Humanist Association, the National Secular Society and the Rationalist Press Association.

The letter read: "By resolutely retaining the ban, the BBC is discriminating against the non-religious, and thus giving the impression of promoting religion as the one source of ethics."

reposted from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2193321.stm
my highlights / emphasis / comments

Thought for the Day - some comments

Some Comments on Think Humanist Thought For The Day.

“I was always told that extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof; religions make the most utterly extraordinary claims while offering no real proof whatsoever, and yet are allowed to go unchallenged even by those who ought to know better. It is this unthinking acceptance of religion?s absurd pampering that ideas like the Darwin day podcasts seek to challenge. Such ideas have rarely been more timely.”
Iain Banks

“It is wrong that ‘Thought for the Day’ refuses to have any but religious voices on it. The far richer and longer-standing humanist tradition, stemming from Socrates to our own day, is a treasure-house of insights and perspectives that our world is tragically lacking, oppressed as it is by mainly religion-fuelled divisions and atrocities. The Humanist Society of Scotland has done us a service in offering a real alternative to predictable pieties that now speak to minorities only in our society.”
A.C. Grayling

The BBC's refusal to allow non-religious voices on Thought for the Day infuriates me, so I was delighted to hear about the Humanist TFTD and have just listened to Kate Hudson.

A big disappointment.

I get indigestion when Anne Atkins uses the slot to force-feed us with her religious views. Kate Hudson did exactly the same with her peace movement views, and I suffered exactly the same reaction.

Surely the idea of the slot is to provide a stimulating thought, often with a link to a topic in the news, not to propagandise.

2007-02-14 15:49:23

Jeremy Rodell

5

It's a shame you thought that Jeremy. I thought it was lovely piece about Love. Sure she talks about the CND, I would imagine it means a lot to her: if only more people felt as passionately about what they believed in.

Have you listened to the last two archived podcasts? They are also really interesting and thought provoking.

Humanism is a 'broad church' and we will never all agree but at least kate's podcast made you think enough to comment.

2007-02-14 16:42:07

Humanista

reposted from: http://www.thinkhumanist.org/
my highlights / emphasis / comments

Google 15 - Motivation to lose weight - 2

Bananas for lunch (not All Day Breakfast) help.

My target weight loss is 0.5 pounds per week. Actual loss is 187 pounds (2nd October 2006) to 174.1 pounds (15th Feb 2007) viz 13 pounds in 39 weeks or 0.33 per week (with blip up at Xmas!).

I'm on target to lose further 19 pounds (155 pounds) by April 2008.

Waist to hip ratio target 0.95 or 94cm waist /99cm hip.
30/12/06 was 104cm waist /99 hip cm= 1.05

Today 100.5cm waist, hip 99.5cm. Ratio: 1.01. 1'm no longer abdominally obese (>=102cm waist)!

Tell the world "I'll do it, but only if you'll help me do it" - PledgeBank

What a brilliant idea!! Pledgebank will be massive influence for democracy. The last pledge listed on this page is particularly poignant.

About Pledgebank
You can listen to an MP3 of this instead.

Hello. I'm Tom Steinberg, the director of mySociety, the charitable group which is building PledgeBank. I've taken the unusual step of recording this introduction because PledgeBank is a slightly unusual idea. I've found that explaining it in person often works better than using the written word.

We all know what it is like to feel powerless, that our own actions can't really change the things that we want to change. PledgeBank is about beating that feeling by connecting you with other people who also want to make a change, but who don't want the personal risk of being the only person to turn up to a meeting or the only person to donate ten pounds to a cause that actually needed a thousand.

The way it works is simple. You create a pledge which has the basic format 'I'll do something, but only if other people will pledge to do the same thing'. For example, if you'd always want to organise a street party you could organise a pledge which said 'I'll hold a street party, but only if three people who live in my street will help me to run it'

The applications of PledgeBank are limitless. If you are a parent you could say that 'I will help run an after hours sports club but only if 5 other parents will commit one evening a week to doing it '. If you are in a band you could say 'I'll hold a gig but only if 40 people will come along'.

PledgeBank has been undergoing real world testing for a few weeks already, and there are already some successful completed pledges completely outside our original ideas of how people might use the site. One person gathered 20 other fans of a BBC radio series to lobby for its release on CD. Another encouraged 8 people who he'd never met to bury buckets in their own gardens to make homes for endangered stag beetles. And a member of an online community said he'd organise a 5th birthday party and now has 30 members of that community saying they'll come along.

PledgeBank isn't just limited to people who use the internet a lot. You can sign up to any pledge with a simple two word text message (in the UK only). Ideal for getting your friends in the pub involved, people in your street and so on.

PledgeBank is free, easy to use, and needs your involvement before we can launch. So if there's something you'd like to achieve in your community, in your place of employment, your university, amongst your friends, or in your street, please take a look at PledgeBank.com and create a pledge right now. Thank you.

FAQ

• To PledgeBank front page

Lists of pledges - Open

• "I will donate $65 to help 2 women in Niger (West Africa) become literate but only if 10 other people anywhere in the world will do the same."

  — Vickram, from Toronto, Canada

  Deadline to sign up by: 31^st January 2007
  5 people have signed up, 5 more needed

• "I will get this to the PM and show him we will not stand for horse slaughtering in the UK but only if 100 or more other caring people will do the same."

  — Julia Donald

  Deadline to sign up by: 1^st August 2007
  82 people have signed up, 18 more needed

  Country: United Kingdom

• "I will do all in my power to put an end to private firework displays in the UK but only if 10 other local people will do the same."

  — Pamela Alford, Resident of Station Ces, Ashford TW15

  Deadline to sign up by: 31^st January 2007
  4 people have signed up, 6 more needed

  Country: United Kingdom
  Postcode area: TW15 (view map)

• "I will HItch Hike to Morocco!!!! but only if 20 other people will donate £5 to the Indian 'New Life' Orphanage."

  — Jes Howarth, Student of Sussex University

  Deadline to sign up by: 1^st March 2007
  6 people have signed up, 14 more needed

  Country: United Kingdom

• "I will arrange for my MP to receive a copy of Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" but only if 645 other people (one per UK constituency) will do the same for other MPs."

  — J Christie

  Deadline to sign up by: 31^st March 2007
  189 people have signed up, 456 more needed

  Country: United Kingdom

• "I will refuse to fill out the 2011 UK census unless there is a Cornish ethnicity tick box option but only if 1,000 other people will do the same."

  — Chris Jones

  Deadline to sign up by: 1^st January 2011
  59 people have signed up, 941 more needed

Successful pledges, closed to new signers (250)

Failed Pledges (336)

Successful pledges, open to new signers

• "I will ask my MP to pledge his or her support - and vote - to stop the clock being put back an hour in winter depriving us of an hour's daylight in the evening but only if 50 other people will do the same."

  — Victor Keegan, Writer

  Deadline to sign up by: 30^th January 2007
  67 people have signed up (17 over target)

• "I will write to the Secretary of State for Health and insist she looks into the nutritional benefits of freshly extracted fruit and vegetable juice but only if 15 other people will do the same."

  — Kris Talikowski

  Deadline to sign up by: 1^st March 2007
  15 people have signed up

• "I will Not vote for any political party that does not oppose national- ID cards but only if 20 other people will do the same."

  — Peter Lucas, advocate of democracy

  Deadline to sign up by: 1^st May 2007
  37 people have signed up (17 over target)

• "I will use Open Office all the time instead of Microsoft Office but only if 22 other people will do the same."

  — Cybersavvy, Open Source convert

  Deadline to sign up by: 1^st July 2007
  38 people have signed up (16 over target)

• "I will campaign for changes to the electoral system to make voting abstentions count but only if 10 other people will do the same."

  — Steve N, resident of Greenwich, London

  Deadline to sign up by: 31^st December 2008
  23 people have signed up (13 over target)

• "I will contact tony blair and get the shooting of my daughter looked in to again but only if 10 other local people will do the same."

  — jacqui probert, horfield bristol

  Deadline to sign up by: 2^nd October 2007
  15 people have signed up (5 over target)

Kate Hudson - Thought for the Day - The Love of Humanity

Kate Hudson has been chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament since 2003. She is a leading anti-nuclear and anti-war campaigner nationally and internationally. She is also author of CND Now More than Ever: The Story of a Peace Movement. www.cnduk.org

Download the transcript of this Thought For Today

13-02-2007 (2.89 MB)
Download Kate Hudson - Duration: 3:10

Kate Hudson - Transcript

One day, when I was a child, my father put a poster up at home. It was a quotation from Che Guevara, and it said, 'Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.' It somehow seemed compelling but I wasn't quite sure what it meant. My father was happy to explain: 'It means he will act to try and change the world and make it better for everybody, because he loves all people, not just a few'. The all-embracing nature of that love seemed remarkable to me, and the active nature of it too. That one sentence has inspired me probably more than anything else.

In recent years that sentence has come to my mind again, as I have become more involved with the peace movement. As a CND activist, I've had the privilege to meet a great number of people who've worked tirelessly, often over many decades, to try and prevent the suffering and sorrow of war, and to ensure that the great tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never be repeated. Indeed, the story of CND is the story of ordinary people's struggles: to shape a world without nuclear weapons and war, based on legality and morality; to make our governments responsive and accountable over our right to stay alive, our right to breathe air free of radioactive pollution, our right to say no to the indiscriminate killing of other peoples.

Whether or not the individuals involved would think of it in this way or not, I don't know, but I would say they are motivated by a love for humanity. And I certainly don't think this is a minority sentiment in society. I was very struck, by the selfless motivation of those who protested against war on Iraq on February 15th, 2003. Before the big anti-war demos of recent years, the largest demonstrations since the second world war had been the CND marches of the early 1980s. People demonstrated in their hundreds of thousands against siting cruise missiles in Britain, because they feared that a nuclear war would be fought in Europe. This was a matter of life and death to us, and we protested for our own survival.

But when 2 million people demonstrated on February 15th 2003, they were not marching to protect themselves. They were protesting against a war on a country they will never see, for a people they will never know. For me, that demonstration was a true expression of love for humanity, in action. For me, that love for humanity is the true heart of the peace movement, and it is something that we can all share and demonstrate.

reposted from: http://www.thinkhumanist.org/p.php?file=2007-02-12_katehudson.mp3
my highlights / emphasis / comments

AC Grayling - Thought for the Day - Is a tolerant society at risk of tolerating those who are intollerant?

Thought For The Day

The BBC does not allow secular thinkers on ‘Thought For The Day’ and is committed to keeping the slot religious. The Humanist Society of Scotland believes that morality and ethics are not the sole preserve of faith groups and have decided to create and podcast their own Humanist TFTDs here, on thinkhumanist.org . The site is linked to over 7000 Humanist orientated organisations throughout the world. Our aim is both to offer an alternative to religious morality and to show the BBC and the public that Humanists can be equally, if not more, thought provoking when tackling moral and ethical issues as religious thinkers.

This is thinkhumanist.org FIRST Thought for the Day. On Darwin's Birthday 12th February. Darwin was born: 12/2/1809

A.C.Grayling
Transcript of Thought For Today
One of the essentials of a good community that is, a community in which each of us can build flourishing lives for ourselves and those we care about, is tolerance. Tolerance matters for the obvious reason that the diversity of interests and desires people have is sometimes so great that we don't even understand why others should think and behave as they do; and yet we acknowledge their right to do so, because we cherish the same right for
ourselves. Thus the very possibility of society turns on tolerance. Society involves people getting along peacefully all the time and co-operatively most of the time, and neither is possible unless people recognise the entitlement of others
to their choices, and give them space accordingly. But here, of course, is the familiar rub: the paradox of tolerance, which is that a tolerant society is at risk of tolerating those who are intolerant, and allowing movements to grow which foster intolerance. The profoundly dismaying spectacle of the contemporary Netherlands illustrates this point. What was one of the most inclusive and welcoming societies in Europe has been stabbed in the heart by people it sheltered and who have grown into intolerant activists wishing to impose conformity and censorship on others by violence. And alas, it has happened here too. The remedy for the paradox of tolerance is, of course, that tolerance can't tolerate intolerance. But this truism is often greeted with the response that if tolerance is intolerant of something, it is in breach of itself: it becomes self-defeating in another way. The answer is to insist that although it's natural to think that tolerance is a warm, woolly, feel-good attitude, in fact it is a principle: it's an ethical demand that everyone should respect everyone else's rights and liberties. And this does the trick all by itself. Tolerance is not a demand to license just anything whatever, least of all behaviour that threatens the rights of others. Tolerance thus has its central place in the good society along with other principles that stop it from being a merely flabby acceptance that anything goes. These are the principles of pluralism and individual liberty, which essentially require tolerance, but indicate its rational limit. Insisting on this vital point is what explains why tolerance not only cannot but must not tolerate intolerance.

11-02-2007 (2.24 MB)
Download AC Grayling - Duration: 2:27

Grayling was born in Luanshya, Zambia and spent his formative years in the British expatriate community of East Africa. His first exposure to philosophical writing was at the age of twelve when he read an English translation of Plato's Charmides dialogue. At fourteen he read G. H. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy. This work was instrumental in confirming his ambition to study philosophy. Grayling later remarked on the text, "It superinduced order on the random reading that had preceded it, and settled my vocation." After returning to England in his teens Grayling studied at Sussex University and Magdalen College, Oxford where he obtained his doctorate in 1981. The subject of his thesis was "scepticism and transcendental arguments." This was supervised by the philosophers P. F. Strawson and A. J. Ayer. Grayling lectured in philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford before taking up a post at Birkbeck, University of London where he subsequently became Professor in Philosophy.

reposted from: http://www.thinkhumanist.org/p.php?file=2007-02-09_acgrayling.mp3
my highlights / emphasis / comments

The Role of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin

For more than 20 years Darwin collected vast amounts of scientific data and pondered the issue of how animals and plants changed their morphology over long periods of time.

In addition to establishing the science of evolutionary biology, Darwin was an accomplished geologist and had collected many fossils from various strata of rocks during his five-year voyage on the Beagle; as a result of this activity, he was aware of the vast age of the earth.

He also studied mutations resulting from breeding experiments with domestic animals and plants.

He was able to consider all this information when he was trying to determine the ‘specific mechanism’ that permitted animals and plants to change over time. Eventually he realized that the mechanism underlying the process of evolution was that of ‘natural selection’. This idea led him to publish On The Origin Of Species, arguably the most significant book of the last two centuries, on November the 24, 1859.

To explain the mechanism of natural selection, the first two paragraphs of Chapter 4, on natural selection, taken from his original publication are presented below so that you can read it, in Darwin’s own words. To read the entire Chapter or the entire publication, go to On the Origin of Species.

Natural Selection

How will the struggle for existence, discussed too briefly in the last chapter, act in regard to variation? Can the principle of selection, which we have seen is so potent in the hands of man, apply in nature? I think we shall see that it can act most effectually. Let it be borne in mind in what an endless number of strange peculiarities our domestic productions, and, in a lesser degree, those under nature, vary; and how strong the hereditary tendency is. Under domestication, it may be truly said that the, whole organisation becomes in some degree plastic. Let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life. Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of Procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic.

We shall best understand the probable course of natural selection by taking the case of a country undergoing some physical change, for instance, of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants would almost immediately undergo a change, and some species might become extinct. We may conclude, from what we have seen of the intimate and complex manner in which the inhabitants of each country are bound together, that any change in the numerical proportions of some of the inhabitants, independently of the change of climate itself, would most seriously affect many of the others. If the country were open on its borders, new forms would certainly immigrate, and this also would seriously disturb the relations of some of the former inhabitants. Let it be remembered how powerful the influence of a single introduced tree or mammal has been shown to be. But in the case of an island, or of a country partly surrounded by barriers, into which new and better adapted forms could not freely enter, we should then have places in the economy of nature which would assuredly be better filled up, if some of the original inhabitants were in some manner modified; for, had the area been open to immigration, these same places would have been seized on by intruders. In such case, every slight modification, which in the course of ages chanced to arise, and which in any way favoured the individuals of any of the species, by better adapting them to their altered conditions, would tend to be preserved; and natural selection would thus have free scope for the work of improvement.

Source: Charles Darwin.; On The Origin of Species: The Easton Press Norwalk Con.

Additional reading and websites: Larson, Edward; Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory, Modern Library Edition 2004.
Dawkins, Richard; The Blind Watchmaker:, W.W. Norton and Co. 1996
Diamond, Jared; The Third Chimpanzee, Harper Perenniel, 1993.

reposted from: http://www.darwinday.org/englishL/evolution/theory.html
my highlights / emphasis / comments

Io: The Prometheus Plume

What's happening on Jupiter's moon Io? Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite image from the robotic Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. At the image top, over Io's limb, a bluish plume rises about 140 kilometers above the surface of a volcanic caldera known as Pillan Patera.

In the image middle, near the night/day shadow line, the ring shaped Prometheus plume is seen rising about 75 kilometers, or about 46 miles, above Io while casting a shadow below the volcanic vent. Named for the Greek god who gave mortals fire, the Prometheus plume is visible in every image ever made of the region dating back to the Voyager flybys of 1979, presenting the possibility that this plume has been continuously active for at least 18 years. The above digitally sharpened image was originally recorded on June 28, 1997 from a distance of about 600,000 kilometers, or 373,000 miles.

Image credit: NASA/JPL


+ Full Resolution

reposted from: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_758.html
my highlights / emphasis / comments

Darwin Day - Celebrating the birth of Darwin 12th February 1809

The Evolution of a Global Celebration
Of Science and Humanity

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
February 12, 1809 to April 19, 1882

Darwin's 200th Birthday will occur on February 12, 2009; it will also be the 150th Anniversary of the publication of his famous book, On The Origin of Species. So, together we can evolve a truly international Celebration to express gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity. The objective of Darwin Day Celebration is to encourage existing institutions worldwide, such as municipalities, public and private schools, colleges and universities, libraries, museums, churches, private organizations and individuals to celebrate Science and Humanity every year, on, or near, February 12, Darwin's birthday!

2007 celebrations worldwide

reposted from: http://www.darwinday.org
my highlights / emphasis / comments

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2007 February 13

Vela Supernova Remnant in Visible Light
Credit: Digitized Sky Survey, ESA/ESO/NASA FITS Liberator
Color Composite: Davide De Martin (Skyfactory)

Explanation: The explosion is over but the consequences continue. About eleven thousand years ago a star in the constellation of Vela could be seen to explode, creating a strange point of light briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of recorded history. The outer layers of the star crashed into the interstellar medium, driving a shock wave that is still visible today. A roughly spherical, expanding shock wave is visible in X-rays. The above image captures much of that filamentary and gigantic shock in visible light, spanning almost 100 light years and appearing twenty times the diameter of the full moon. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it decays and reacts with the interstellar medium, producing light in many different colors and energy bands. Remaining at the center of the Vela Supernova Remnant is a pulsar, a star as dense as nuclear matter that completely rotates more than ten times in a single second.

reposted from: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
my highlights / emphasis / comments